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Saturday, 5 April 2014

No good run goes unpunished

I had been waiting for this day for
weeks. Some of my club mates wanted to extend the usual Saturday run
into a three-hour session in preparation for a marathon they're
running in May and asked me if I wanted to join them. Of course I
did! Problem was, I have been putting in two quality sessions per
week in addition to my long runs lately, which have been getting
longer and longer. Now, I'm not an expert, but something tells me
that increasing your speed and your weekly mileage is a recipe
for disaster.

Cue my worries earlier this week.

Despite my legs itching to go for a
longer run, I decided to keep a cool head and wait until this morning
to see how my body felt. I had taken a couple of days off from
training to let my legs recuperate but I had a thigh muscle that was
tight and a moody respiratory system that didn't want to
get out of bed in the mornings.

I woke up with a partially blocked
nose. I rolled carefully to my side and looked at the clock. I found
my pulse and started counting heartbeats. I counted a second time just to
make sure. I was not liking the results so much, so I counted a third
time and got a slightly better result. Five heartbeats over my normal
fifty beats per minute. Not completely ok, but acceptable. There was
probably an infection in my body but hopefully not a serious one. I
would run up to our meeting place with AIK and see how my thigh felt.

My thigh still felt tight but it didn't
hurt. The overall feeling in my body was great, better than it had
been in weeks. The infection signals faded away the closer I got to my
destination and soon disappeared completely.

We ran westwards and into the headwind
that rushed to meet us. Time flew as we talked about upcoming races,
injuries, shoes. Some 15 kilometres later we were back where we had
started. My club mates asked me if I was going to join them in the
extended run after all. Of course I was!

With the wind now on our backs, we ran
eastwards. I sent an sms to J warning him that he might have to come
and pick me up in the car, but then I did some calculations in my
head and decided to turn back after 24 km to save him the trouble.
Running home after that would bring me to an even 30 km, my dream
goal this day. It's been over six months since I last ran that far.

What I had forgotten was that the way
back meant a strong headwind. I almost had to lean into the wind to
be able to move forward and my thigh started sending me ransom
letters claiming it had taken my knee hostage. I tried running
faster, lifting my knees more, anything to give my tired muscles a
break. It seemed to pacify my disgruntled thigh.

I was surprisingly fresh when I got
home, except for some light-headedness that I attributed to the wind. No good run goes unpunished, of course. So I am
expecting I will be bedridden with a fever all day tomorrow.